In Part 1 of this project, you learned how to create, set up, and import into an FLA file in preparation for creating a banner. In this part, you'll learn to create symbols, animation, and even write some simple ActionScript to make the banner function

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Welcome to Part 2 of this three-part introduction to Macromedia Flash Basic 8 or Macromedia Flash Professional 8. You successfully completed
Part 1 of this tutorial, where you created, set up, and imported content into an FLA file. Because you’re reading Part 2, you’re probably ready to learn more about Flash. That’s good, because you will create symbols, animation, and even write
some simple ActionScript to make the banner function in this continuation tutorial. Following this part, you’ll add the banner
to a website using Dreamweaver (or, you can optionally upload the banner to a website using any tool).

See the introduction to “Basic Tasks: Creating a banner, Part 1” on page 25 for a desecription of Part 1, 2, and 3 of this tutorial.

You do not need any prerequisite knowledge to complete these tutorials, however you should complete Part 1 (“Basic Tasks: Creating a banner, Part 1” on page 25) of this tutorial before you start Part 2.

In Part 2 of this tutorial, you will complete the following tasks:

Examine the completed FLA file

44

Adding text

46

Creating a symbol

49

Adding animation to a timeline

51

Creating a button

56

Writing simple actions

59

Test the application

61

The tutorial workflow includes the following tasks:

“Examine the completed FLA file” on page 44 lets you view the completed Flash document for Part 2.

“Adding text” on page 46 shows you how to create and format text in a FLA file.

“Creating a symbol” on page 49 shows you how to create a movie clip symbol, to which you’ll add an animation.

“Adding animation to a timeline” on page 51 shows you how to create animation using the main Timeline and motion tweens.

“Creating a button” on page 56 shows you how to create a button to add interactivity to your banner.

“Writing simple actions” on page 59 shows you how to write simple ActionScript to make the button work.

“Test the application” on page 61 shows you how to export and test your document’s SWF file, which lets you test your progress so far.

Examine the completed FLA file

As you examine the finished version of an application that you’ll create, you’ll also look at the Flash workspace.

In this section, you will complete the following tasks:

“Open the authoring document” on page 163

“Review the completed FLA file” on page 45

“Close the completed FLA file” on page 46

In subsequent sections you’ll go through the steps to create the application yourself starting with a brand new FLA file.

Open the finished FLA file

The files for this tutorial are located in the Samples and Tutorials folder in the Flash installation folder. For many users,
particularly in educational settings, this folder is read-only. Before proceeding with the tutorial, you should copy the entire
FlashBanner tutorial folder to the writable location of your choice. In Part 1, you might have already copied the FlashBanner source files to another location of your hard disk.

On most computers, you will find the Flash Banner tutorial folder in the following locations:

Copy the FlashBanner folder to another location on your hard disk to which you have access. Inside this folder are three directories
for each part of this tutorial: Part1, Part2, and Part3. In the FlashBanner/Part2 folder, you will find a Flash file called
banner2_complete.fla. Double-click the file to open it in Flash. You now see the completed tutorial file in the Flash authoring
environment.

Review the completed FLA file

In the completed FLA file, you will see the structure that makes up the finished SWF file for Part 2 of this tutorial. The application, a Flash banner for a gnome website, looks like this at the end of Part 2: